In China, Rapid Social Changes Bring a Surge in the Divorce Rate

For centuries, ordinary Chinese have greeted each other on the street with a question that reflected the nation's primary concern: "Chi le ma?" or "Have you eaten?"

Now, according to a popular joke in Beijing, people who see a friend on the street voice a new concern with a new question: "Li le ma?" -- "Have you divorced?"

In China, where rapid economic growth is creating new hopes and fears and where Government interference in personal lives is receding steadily, many Beijing residents say one of the most profound changes in their society is the surge in divorce.

The divorce rate in Beijing leapt to 24.4 percent in 1994, more than double the 12 percent rate just four years ago, Beijing Youth Daily reported this month. Although statistics can be misleading -- the divorce rate is measured by comparing the number of marriages and divorces in a given year -- officials say it is rising all over China, and faster in cities than in the countryside.

The United Nations conference on women, to be held here from Sept. 4 to 15, is expected to draw attention to the social and economic ills facing women in China and elsewhere.

Yet for women in Beijing, the growing divorce rate is a reflection of a new social and economic freedom, of the rising expectations that women bring to marriage, and of damaging effects from what many Beijing residents say is a remarkable increase in adulterous affairs. More than 70 percent of divorces are now initiated by women, divorce lawyers say, and the most common reason given is that a husband has had an affair.

"Only a few years ago, people would let a temple be destroyed before they would let a marriage fail," said Pi Xiaoming, a leading divorce lawyer whose work at the East Beijing Women's Federation used to involve applying intense pressure on couples not to divorce.

"We did everything possible to keep people from separating," Ms. Pi said. "If there was 1 percent chance of saving a marriage, we'd expend all our effort to overcome the 99 percent of difficulty."

Now, Ms. Pi and other Government officials who once actively opposed divorce support it as an acceptable alternative to an unhappy marriage, and a divorce that once took years to win approval can now be processed in three days if both side agree. Many officials even recognize a positive side of divorce.

"The high rate of divorce reflects a kind of 'master of my own fate' notion among urban residents," wrote the Beijing Youth Daily. "From an overall perspective, the high rate of divorce represents a kind of social advancement."

But the Government's shift in attitude is only one ingredient in the rising divorce rate. A larger one seems to be growing demands by women in an era of expanding opportunity.

"My husband used to say, 'You have your job, your study overseas, a roof over your head, what more do you want?' " said Liang Hua, 41, who divorced last year. "What I wanted was a husband who didn't sit at home all day, watching sports on television."

If most Chinese men still look for a stable home and a reliable mother for their children, several women in different professions agreed, women who used to be content with a steady family income now want more: romance, sex and affection.

"My husband never kissed me, not once," said Lan Ding, 40, a self-employed tailor who said she had divorced her husband, an air force officer, because of the way he treated her. "We had a child, but he never kissed me. I only learned how to do that much later."

One of the most popular books in Beijing this year is "The Bridges of Madison County," the American best seller whose story of a midlife affair that brings romance to a woman's life clearly struck a chord here. Several women said they had spent evenings sitting around with friends, debating whether the romance described in the book is possible in marriage.

"Before, marriage was very stable, but the quality was very low," said Wang Xingjuan, who listens to hundreds of complaints each month on the women's hot line she runs in Beijing. "It was something you did and didn't think about. Now, people have high expectations from marriage."

Ms. Wang also said that most Chinese women traditionally had sex only for the purpose of bearing children. But China's one-child policy, while resisted by many women in the countryside, has made urban women freer both to pursue careers and to pursue sex. "Now it's for pleasure, for health," Ms. Wang said.

Wu Liyong, 36, a director of a food products company in Beijing, said one of the causes of her divorce earlier this year, after 12 years of marriage, was an unsatisfactory sex life.

"We were taught that the man is the one to initiate sex," she said. "I didn't say anything for a long time. But when I finally talked about it with my friends, they told me I was stupid. I feel like I wasted 10 years."

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If China's economic reforms have brought greater independence to women in some ways -- more choice of career, place to live, husband, lover -- they have also brought women a greater danger of unemployment than men face.

At the same time, the loosening of Government control has also meant a resurgence of traditional attitudes among men: that money means access to women.

"Men like to see women as objects," said Feng Yuan, a journalist at China Women's News who has written extensively on how social changes affect women. "They feel that the more they achieve, the more ability or charisma they have."

A 32-year-old man who works for a securities company in Shanghai said that he was faithful to his wife during the three years they dated before marriage, but that he started having affairs about six months afterward.

"Chinese men need other women," said the man, who added that many of his friends feel the same way. "Family life is one thing; life outside is another. You don't have to hide it; everyone at work knows who my girlfriend is."

Part of the broader problem, both women and men say, is that Chinese society does not teach men to treat their wives well.

"My husband was a good worker, a good son to his parents, a good father to his son and a terrible husband," said Ms. Lan, the woman who divorced an air force officer. "That's what our society teaches men to do."

Ms. Feng, the journalist, thinks that one of several causes of the rising divorce rate is the influx of books and movies from the West.

"Ten years ago, the Government blamed affairs on 'bourgeois liberalization,' " a code for Western influence, she said. "But it was counterproductive because it made a lot of people think, now that capitalism is O.K., that it's also O.K. to have affairs, too."

The current surge in divorce is not the first in modern China. The 1950 Constitution and a new marriage law, which redefined rights within families, encouraged a wave of divorces in the early 1950's. Many of these were initiated by Communist army soldiers who, after their victory in 1949, moved to cities and divorced wives they had married in rural hometowns but abandoned during the long years of war.

At the start of the Cultural Revolution in 1966, when millions of lives were shattered by accusations of political incorrectness, many people were forced to divorce a spouse for political reasons. After that period of turmoil ended in 1976, many others divorced spouses they had married in unusual circumstances, though no reliable statistics have been kept on what the divorce rates were at that time, Ms. Feng said.

For all the women who have divorced, there are countless more who have considered it but been unable or unwilling to do so.

At the women's hot line, run out of a small office in central Beijing, a recent caller described herself as a 31-year-old doctor who has been married to a businessman eight years and has a small daughter.

When she discovered that her husband was having an affair, she asked for a divorce. He refused, saying that he wanted to stay married for the sake of their child, and tried to soothe his wife by saying he would buy them a new house and give her a car of her own, still a rarity in China.

"I don't know what do," said the woman, who can still win a divorce if she demonstrates that she is incompatible with her husband. "I want to rely on myself, but I don't want to have a less comfortable life."

Ms. Lan said she urged many of her friends not to follow her example, because of the economic difficulty she has had raising a son on her own, and because of the hard time she has had finding another man.

"A lot of people still see a divorced woman as immoral, but see a divorced man as fine." Ms. Lan said.

As for her son, Wang Xiyue, 14, Ms. Lan used to worry that he would be the only student in his class whose parents are divorced. She doesn't worry any more.

"There are six of them now," she said, affectionately rubbing a hand over his head. "It's getting more and more common."

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A version of this article appears in print on August 22, 1995, on Page A00001 of the National edition with the headline: In China, Rapid Social Changes Bring a Surge in the Divorce Rate. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe